(PEN/Faulkner Award Nominee) This collection of stories is Edward P. Jones' follow-up to his stunning novel The Known World, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The 14 stories here (five of which first appeared in The New Yorker) tell of people in various decades of the 20th century who moved up from the South to Washington, D.C., hoping to make new lives for themselves. In the title story, a Korean War veteran investigates the death of a family friend whose sorry end seems entwined with his mother's violent Southern childhood.

"Manages to stun on every page; there are too many breathtaking lines to count."—NYTBR